Mature Traveler

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

We entered Vietnam
on the edge of a monsoon at the end of a calendar year. Some days are bleak but
dry; others see rain that beats down hard the whole day and night. Our
clothes stay damp. The pillow and bed sheets are damp. The sun that I need
to clear up the congestion in my lungs doesn't appear and now my husband
has a cold too. As the sky turns purple once more, I know it’s going to be
a lousy day for bird watching.

Our over night field trip to an old hill station called Bach Ma is pre-arranged and we
can’t cancel it. This will be a wet one.

Bach Ma is a national park located half way down the crooked finger of a
country that is Vietnam.
It's a forested mountain and protected area that butts up against Laos. Only two hours
by car outside of the ancient imperial capital Hue, forty years ago, someone would tell you
that Bach Ma was located south of the demilitarized zone.

Our ornithologist, Mr. Minh greets us warmly. In spite of the rain and the
unlikely prospect of seeing many birds, he insists we trek up the mountain
during which he entertains us with his life history.

Minh was university educated in Czechoslovakia. On
scholarship there, he was homesick and isolated over several winters, slipping on snow
he'd never seen before, and wearing Vietnamese-made leather soled shoes that
quickly fell apart. Understanding that we were on the cusp of our new year in a
foreign land, he told us about his own memorable new year’s experience in
CzechoslovakiaIt was the Tet New Year and to celebrate, he lit some homemade firecrackers inside his
boarding house. Not surprisingly, the explosives set off a heated argument in the
neighbourhood. On one side, his landlady, the neighbours, and the local fire
department; on his side, nobody. He narrowly avoided being thrown out on the
street but for his fine manners and good judgement 364 days of the year.

He
told us too about his part recently in an Australian research project documenting
the history of colonial Bach Ma. His role in Dr. Fife's study was to ferret out the
local elderly to record their memories. Too often though, they were not
cooperating, dying before he could interview them.

It rained sideways. We walked more than twelve kilometres over an afternoon
and the following morning. Minh continued his stories, now about the history of
Bach Ma, interrupting only to draw Dan’s attention to a bird. Over three days,
the bird count will total 35 in spite of the rain. Dan is delighted.For my part, I walk and listen, taking notes
about the mountain as best I can under a borrowed hooded motorcycle poncho that
drapes to my ankles. It had a built-in "window" of clear plastic through
which I could view my moving pen.

I was reasonably comfortable in my portable tent and confident that the
anti-leech socks that Minh lent us would protect me from losing a bucket of
blood to those awful creatures. Minh is an advocate of leech protection. He
recounted, matter-of-factly, how he had to pull a leech off his penis one time on an overnight campout on the
mountain. His girlfriend was just as unlucky but he didn't continue the story.

Bach Ma was a hill station built by French colonists in the 1930s. That’s
comparatively late for many hill stations across South
Asia since the idea of a seasonal home in the mountains developed
in former English colonies more than a century earlier. Most were built around
a sanatorium where homesick foreigners could recuperate from fatigue and
life-threatening tropical illnesses. Later they evolved into small towns,
architecturally similar to home. Ex-pats surrounded themselves with clubs,
libraries, churches, and recreational facilities built in the architectural
styles of Europe. Many hill stations remain
today, some a lot worse for wear since they have overseen political upheavals,
and new landlords. Others, like Bach Ma, were destroyed beyond repair, unable
to side step being on the front line of war.

The most famous hill station
surviving in Vietnam is
called Dalat, and that town was conveniently protected by agreement between Hanoi and Saigon not to
bomb it during the war. It remains well preserved and adapting to a new
generation, enriched by the new economy of their post-war world. Providing
refuge for a growing middle class, Vietnamese of means are not fleeing tropical
heat nor pestilence today; now they are fleeing choking, exhaust-filled cities.

On Bach Ma, we walk the same cobbled path as had Vietnamese bearers eighty years ago
when they transported French officials and their families in
litters to the mountain retreat. Earning what Minh calculated were three Indochina pennies for a day's labour, one of these
labourers could then buy about five kilos of rice for his family. It was a
good living; an even better one for the colonist.

We walk by the hard rock foundation stones of villa after villa, all that’s
left after what's called the American
War. We stopped at one fully intact structure, recently restored as a
guesthouse for naturalists and students who now come to Bach Ma in
peace time. While the building had been pasted back together, the
pool, a gazebo, and the tennis court lay abandoned in the sunken terraces
off the road, overgrown and cracked. Other houses, beyond restoration, show bullet-pocked
foundation stones jutting up from piles of dead leaves, like grave stones.
Here is a place where man has retreated, and nature is reclaiming its own.

Minh identifies a screaming red-wiskered bulbill.

At its height, there were more than 130 structures on Bach Ma. Ironically,
the village’s destruction is perhaps the mountain’s best protection in peace
time. The mountain was left alone and then designated a
national park in 1991. As a park and not a hill station, Bach Ma is
protected from modern developers who are changing the environment of other hill
stations, like Dalat, by bringing in timeshares, condos, arcades, shopping centres and karaoke.

Bach Ma was pulled into the war because the plateau at the top
was used by an American helicopter launch and observation post. The view over
the agricultural basin extends to the sea and Bach Ma was therefore of
strategic value. But with the misty rain and fog, I had trouble seeing my own
hand scribbling notes. The commanding view was lost on me.

Although the Viet Cong could not hide in the villas, they continued to be a
threat to the plateau. Minh shows us the entrance to a complicated tunnel
system with five exits in which Viet Cong fighters lived and observed. For
three years, both sides were stalemated here. Neither mounted an attack against
each other. The Americans could hear voices in the bowels of the mountain, and although
they knew the location of at least a few of the entrances, they would
not blow them up for fear of damaging their own helicopter base. The Viet Cong
on their part would not compromise the system of tunnels by coming out to
sabotage the base.

A silver pheasant crosses the road ahead.

At one turn of the slithering path, the outline of a staircase makes Dan
curious. Like Alice
peering into the rabbit hole, he can’t resist entering. Together we push away the vines
and climb the jagged, broken stones and stand before the facade of a stone
church. Two of the balustrades, pitted with bullet holes, remain, and an
entrance set of stairs leads to a doorway with nothing beyond. Before our eyes, the jungle is arm-wrestling
the standing pieces into the ground. Although the destruction is fresh -a mere
half century in an archaeological calendar - it had the same quality of an ancient
ruin. But unlike the ruins of, say, ancient Khmer, these ghosts seem to me still fleshy. You can smell them. This
quiet place is not on the map for war-relic tourism, yet in the late afternoon
twilight, the uninterrupted misty rain, the woodsy scent of jungle rot, I had a
powerful sense of Imperialist Europe's Indochina
and its decline. Especially it's decline.

A black-throated laughing thrush squeals somewhere deep in the woods.

It's time to turn back. It's nearly dark.

Three kilometres later, we arrive at the stone building which was once a
police station and now the park's entrance hall and restaurant. It's deserted
except for a few staff, assembled to support our stay in the empty old chateau
across the path. Once we pick off the leeches that have stowawayed into the folds of our socks, it's time to retire. As we head off
into the dark, Minh tells us that this is the place where he saw a tiger grab a
chicken the previous year, right here on the driveway at about this time of
night, just when we are crossing it to our room. Minh is so droll.

I am carrying seven blankets to our room under my portable tent. It's still
raining. Our room has a fireplace but it doesn’t work. There are twelve-foot
ceilings, a gigantic half moon window with shutters, and no furnishing except
two metal-legged beds with naked mattresses. I will wrap one of the blankets
around the mattress for a base and use the others on top.

Dan and I bury ourselves under the blankets. We are so tired. We
forget to wish each other happy new year before falling into deep sleep. In the
silence of these first hours, Bach Ma is at peace.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

There's two sides to Belize's Ambergris Caye. The 'Isla Bonita' is growing up in a material world.

Within
minutes of landing at the PhilipS.W.GoldsonInternationalAirport in Belize City, my husband and I are in line
waiting for a connecting flight to Ambergris Caye. It’s
an informal process with no boarding pass, just a list of names on a clipboard.
Nor are there pre-assigned seats. When one plane fills its fourteen seats, it taxis
off and another takes its place.

The tiny
Cessna pulls up to the door of our waiting room. We enter first and the pilot
invites Dan to sit in the empty co-pilot seat. I wedge myself in place behind
him. The size of this plane reminds me of my Subaru Outback; in fact the
purring engine and smooth ride also brings my car to mind. We’re quickly aloft,
the skies are clear, the views are blue and in fifteen minutes, as promised,
we’re touching down on the Caye.

Ambergris
Caye is the largest island in Belize
and the country’s main vacation destination. San Pedro is the island’s only
town and if you believe Madonna in her 1987 hit song, San Pedro is la isla bonita. Like southern Mexico,
the Caye is a subtropical mix of mangrove forests and lagoons supporting 200
species of birds, all under the protection of the largest living reef in the
northern hemisphere running down its east coast.

But
things have changed since Madonna’s song rocked the airwaves a generation ago. There’s
another side to Ambergris Caye that’s emerged. The Caye is growing up in a
material world.

For
example, there are more cars in San Pedro than there were even ten years ago. While
many of them are golf carts, most are gas-powered and are as charming as a
fleet of lawn mowers. But despite the modern-day scars of growth, hardly unique
to Belize,
the town has appeal.

As a
beach town, San Pedro is ultra casual. It may not be the hippy commune it once
was, but it’s not glitz either. There are few upmarket shops. Expansion of that
sector will need more well-heeled foreign retirees. And they might come and
invest in the expanding condominium developments. But in spite of the chic, low
rise, low-density, developments, San Pedro does not look like a town poised to
boom. The island’s capacity for growth along the coast is finite. Or is it?

One
of our guides told us that the government is selling off plots of the shallow
limestone shelf extending from the Caye. Authorized or not, developers are
starting to dyke the shelf, drain it, fill it with sand, and then build on it.
Voila, land.It’s a worrisome trend for
people concerned about the Caye’s fragile ecosystem. Environmentalists as well
as responsible resort owners who rely on marine ecotourism worry about the
reef. Eighty percent of all tourists to Belize visit the marine parks.

Tourists usually come to Ambergris Caye to visit Hol
Chan Marine Reserve and the Blue Hole, the latter a natural phenomenon believed to be the world’s largest vertical
underwater cave. Both sites are part of the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System,
a UNESCO World Heritage site. The
designation is not
only supposed to protect the area from development, but also from commercial
fishing. The variety of colourful fish is impressive as is the quantity. At
first plunge, I found myself snorkelling a few meters above a barracuda the
size of a sofa.

You can swim with nurse sharks.

Nevertheless, despite the pleasure it still affords, a few
years ago, the marine park made UNESCO’s endangered list, joining Florida’s Everglades
also named that year. The committee cited mangrove cutting and excessive
development as the main problems putting the reef at risk.

The reef lies half a mile offshore and runs the entire length
of the Caye (if it circled the Caye, the island would be an atoll). And while
folks are rightly concerned about hurricanes, they also know that the reef can cut
the size of a tidal surge by half. Still,
no one is complacent and the church in central San Pedro remains well attended.
A long time resident told me he has a hurricane plan in place. Coordinated
amongst his extended family, it includes a central meeting place with thick
concrete walls and emergency supplies of food and water. So far, their
gatherings have ended in family cook-outs, good times, though spotty
electricity.

The
Caye’s development has been a big issue for a decade. Concerns are both about
the explosion of vacation properties as
well as the government’s sale of whole islands on the bay side which faces the
mainland. Dr. Colin Young, a
natural scientist of Belize’s
GalinUniversity,
says that one of several issues facing Belize is "ineffective institutional and legal frameworks that inhit enforcement of environment regulations on developers. The enforcement agencies lack financial resources and personnel to enforce regulations."

To
some, the environmental cost is especially painful. Birder, dive instructor and
author Elbert Greer (“Bird Watching with Bubba, A Guidebook to Birds of
Belize”), told me that whole islands on the bay side of the Caye have been sold
by the government and this happens quietly. It’s done before a protest can be
launched. The small islands, like tufts of green hair on a limestone shelf are
nesting sites for some of the region’s loveliest water birds, the White Ibis, the Roseated Spoonbill, among others. “I’ve seen people tear down the
trees. I don’t take people birding there anymore.”

One
such island was sold to Leonardo di Caprio. The good news is that di Caprio, an
acknowledged environmental activist, intends to build a resort in partnership
with Four Seasons based on sustainable design and environmental conservation.
But not all developers have such goals.

Sadly,
with a taxpaying population so small (the population of Belize is about
the same as the number of people who work for Toyota Motor Company worldwide),
there are choices that need to be made. Even discounting government's lack of
regulatory enforcement, not unusual in developing countries, there is only so
much public funding to go around after servicing a large debt.

A
good part of that public money admittedly comes from tourism and especially
from the 9% tax the government collects from the trade. Business in Ambergris
Caye however would like to see more of that money turned back to improvements
on the Caye. For example, the lagoon-side road is always in bad shape even
without hurricane Richard in 2010. Only one street in town has
a sidewalk, partly. On a recent radio talk show, a Caye resident complained
that a sewer project begun three years ago by the government had yet to be
completed. In the meantime, the septic lagoon serving his community has
overflowed because of the rains.

If
you don’t know Ambergris Caye as a largely unpopulated island, its village
community sustained by coconut plantations and fishing, then you may not take
much notice of the development. The hotels and condominiums creeping along the
coast are typically a string of single to four-storey structures, many artfully
designed, and often dotted with coconut trees and couched in well landscaped
grounds. So far, the visual effect is quite the opposite from a Cancun-like
block of high-rise hotels. Outside of festival time, there are no crowds here
and this lends a quality of exclusiveness to the experience.

The
beach is public and you can walk for miles unobstructed. Resort attendants rake the sand within their
boundaries and collect debris washed to shore, the litter of sea vessels and
distant islands, often trapped in the sea grass. The beaches are sandy and
inviting but the sea grass is so thick, and dredging officially disallowed
outside of small portions, that snorkelers have more fun in the water than
swimmers. To the government’s credit and thanks to the cooperation of the
resorts, the sea grass largely remains in place, in spite of complaints by
uniformed vacationers. Sea grass is a natural sieve, holding back sediment from
washing into the sea and trapping pollutants. Sediment clouds the water and
makes a barrier to photosynthesis, a chemical action that coral needs to live.

Many
of the Caye properties are owned and managed by foreigners who have banded
together to form an association. As a group they have been effective in
lobbying for training programs for local staff, people who seek work but are
poorly equipped after graduating, or not, out of a struggling and underfunded
education system. Most on the association’s mind these days is their recent
lobbying efforts, in cooperation with mainland groups, to oppose plans around offshore
oil exploration. With the 2010 gulf oil disaster still in mind, people are extremely
worried about what even a small oil spill could do to the reef.

So
what have I learned about Ambergris Caye?

Ambergris
Caye has two faces, each on its path to its own destiny. There is a breathless
quality to the pace of some newer developments here, reckless disregard for government
regulations and the lagoon environment. At the same time, there are citizen
action groups, feverously working to educate the public and lobby the
government to enforce its own rules, however slim. And in the mix there are
environmentally aware resort managers, like at the Xanadu Resort, maintaining
their plot of sea grass, planting trees, educating their staff, and integrating
sustainable and green practices into the management of their properties.

So while
the quiet island village is no more, condominium developments are not all bad,
and certainly Trip Advisor reviewers don't think so in that Belize's
resorts have won several 2013 Traveler's Choice Awards. Still, informed, mature
travelers vacationing in Caye can choose to walk or rent electric vehicles over gas-powered ones. They
can celebrate the sea grass rather than complain about it to their friends. After all, part of the Caye’s future is owned by visitors like ourselves.

Literally, "ambergris" means the spit of sperm whales, a gray bubbly mass that washes to shore when whales migrate through these parts. Possibly named by fishermen, the concept doesn’t have much cache for travel agents.But it’s just another example of the two sides of Ambergris Caye. Depending on what you think about the Caye’s development, the future of Ambergris Caye will either be your Isla Bonita or whale spit.

The Phoenix Resort

﻿

A lovely condo in Ambergris Caye

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Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Although sciatica
doesn't stop this mature traveler, it does complicate things. Still, a good
muscle relaxer and a set of stretches and back exercises is all I need to get
myself together for a surface border crossing. Here's my trip... in more than
one way.

We enjoy hiring a driver and moving about in a private car.
As we're older now, we're putting more of our money into door-to-door transport
than in previous years. A private car eliminates complex and optimistic train
and bus schedules, dirty waiting rooms, the crush of touts and beggars, all of
those things you get in stations. And although on the road, we're limited to
one snaking, overcrowded pathway, it's still easy to enjoy the passing
landscape. I'm engrossed by the swell of the hills, surprise of mountains,
drama of recent landslides, and narrow, rutted bridges that shake with bouncing
vehicles.

I admit that touring like this gives you only a succession
of images. You don't understand much of a culture just because you see rural
people at work. As a passing voyeur, you're privy to a storyline that's much
the same between under-developed countries: people assembling wares for market,
or bent over mats of grain separating the chaff, or packing cow dung with straw
and wrapping the mixture around three-foot sticks that will serve, cleverly, as
easy-to-handle cooking fuel. I might as well be watching television without the
voice-over. Framed by my window, it's hardly different than a twenty-inch
screen.

I'm deep in such thoughts as we near the Nepal-India border.
I've got a second wind now after a drug-induced sleep in the jeep. Earlier that
morning, I'd thrown out my back yet again, this time worse than before. It happened
in the hotel room, just before leaving. When I reached back for the toilet
paper -which all too often is badly situated in these budget hotels - I felt
that familiar and unwelcome pain. In order to avoid a full out seizure of the
muscle, I hit the floor immediately to perform some breathing and stretching
exercises.

We planned to leave at dawn in order to get to the border
before the worst of the truck traffic. With no place to get breakfast so early
(an acceptable breakfast that is), I took two extra-strength muscle relaxants
on an empty stomach. By the time we were into the countryside, I was seeing
pink piglets in the fields, wearing pink saris, marching into a pink spaceship.

Then it started to rain. Hard sheets of rain. The spaceship
disappeared into mist, as I did myself.

The Border

Border crossings are always challenging, confusing,
humiliating, or all of the above. It's never easy and Dan and I needed to have
our wits about us to figure out how to manage this one into India. My back
was sufficiently numb now after the pills, and provided I didn't sneeze or
laugh, and stood or sat absolutely erect, I was fine.

Our driver, Berinda and his companion Suriyanna (his fiancée
had joined him for the trip with our permission) were very helpful. In fact, we
had the power of a high-priced tour agency in our jeep. Berinda knew, for
example, exactly where we would find all the jeeps waiting for people wanting
to journey on to India's Darjeeling or Kalimpong
versus jeeps for other destinations. You could either pay 150 rupees per person
(about $7 for Dan and I) for a shared jeep - meaning three or four people
corkscrewed into the back seat and three in front - or you could pay 2200
rupees (about $48) for a private jeep. It would take about three hours from the
border to Kalimpong. Curiously, all of these India-destination jeeps were lined
up on the Nepal side of the
border, counter-intuitive for me as I had expected to have to source our jeep from
the India
side.

Dan chose the vehicle (his criteria is functioning
seat-belts) and then Suriyanna used her cell phone to call our hotel in
Kalimpong to get the owner to give direction to our driver in Hindi. As another
precaution, Berinda took the license number of our Indian jeep and gave it to
the hotel with notice that he would telephone again in about three hours to
check that we had arrived safely. Our driver is wonderful.

We parted from our friends promising to keep in touch and
wishing them happiness in their forthcoming marriage and emigration plan.
Suriyanna would be leaving Nepal
soon for Australia.
As a recent nursing graduate from a university there, she was being sponsored
by a hospital in Brisbane.
Once there, she would in turn sponsor her new husband and, like tens of thousands
of Nepalese, would make a new life in a foreign country and send money home.
Within a year, Nepal
will lose one of its very best mountain drivers.

We're off to India.
But not yet. After about 100 meters, the jeep stops. Our new driver, who
doesn't speak English, motions with a wave of his hand for us to go into an
office at the side of the road.

It's raining hard. The dreary cement building is cold and smells
like mouldy paper. This is the Nepal
immigration office and our visa is checked to ensure we've not overstayed the
time limit before our passports are stamped. We also agree to dump our Nepalese
currency with this official in exchange for Indian rupees. He offers an
acceptable rate and gives us our new currency out of his pocket. Everyone has a
sideline.

Then once more we're off for India. But not so fast. Another 100
meters we stop. The driver points to the India customs shack and pulls over
to park on the curb.

At the end of a gloomy, muddy path, we enter a one-room
wooden building. An official in army fatigues offers us two grimy seats
opposite his desk, and pushes over two forms each (they seek identical
information) and waits for us to complete our paperwork. He's rolling back on
the legs of his chair, his eyes follow the strokes of our pen.

The room is dark. A single light bulb dangles on a thread
from the wooden ceiling, either it's burned out or turned off. A pig waddles in
crab grass outside the window. He's not smiling but he's not snarling either,
the official that is, not the pig.

Something like a smile, or perhaps just a muscle twitch,
crosses his face.

It's taken ten years of cajoling and scheming and throwing
literature at Dan to convince him to come to India. Not that I'd been to India myself, but it's always seemed to me that
I have too narrow a perspective on Asia. And
since both Dan and I have proven we're able to get sick in a wide variety of
countries, developing and under developed, we can't exclude India any
longer for health reasons. And as for sciatica, well I just live with it. So
we're finally in. It's still raining. We're choking in the exhaust of idling
trucks. I take another pill for the road and hope for the best.

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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

My personal trainer back home is concerned about my sciatica
and my energy level while I'm traveling in India
so she did some research into India's
ten best spas. She says I need to give myself a break from travel and begged me
to book myself into the Kaya Kalp in Agra.
I did. It was wonderful, and surprisingly, not as expensive as I had feared.

**********

At one point during our two
months in India, we moved on
to Agra, the
city of the Taj Mahal.

But let's skip the big white
palace for a moment and talk about something really important about Agra. That is, the Kaya
Kalp Spa at the ITC Mughal Agra Hotel. Booking myself an Ayurvidic massage was
job one; homage to a dead princess can wait.

I'm told to come half an hour
early for my treatment in order to be assessed. My husband escorts me to my
appointment, if for no other reason than to admire the architecture of this
five-star hotel.

While sipping an infusion of
apple, pepper and ginger, I get to work on a three-page questionnaire. I'm told
that my doshas are imbalanced and the choice of oils for the Ayurvedic
massage will restore balance and "awaken the inner wisdom." I'm asked
endless questions, among them, skin sensitivities, tendencies to bloating and
gas, sleep habits, and project management skills.

I require the Pitta oil. The
interviewer says I have too much fire and need the cooling properties of
sandalwood, lavender, and ylang ylang. I probe further for meaning.

"Madam, you have too
much leadership."

She's being diplomatic,
searching for the right word. Dan interprets. "You're just too bossy and
insensitive."

"Dan, it's okay for you
to leave now. Meet me at 4:30."

"I rest my case."

Once he's gone, I turn my
attention to the assessment. I note they don't allow for menopause on the
questionnaire. I'm thinking that every woman over 50 should get some Pitta oil.

The Kaya Kalp spa is pure
loveliness and solitude. It's the antithesis of any wailing urban space of the
east. And no one under 16 is allowed.

It's appropriately situated
in the city of the Taj Mahal, occupying a whole wing of the pricey ITC Mughal
Hotel. The spa comprises a series of dimly lit corridors, individual treatment
rooms appointed with spare red wood furnishings with marble floors and vaulted
ceilings throughout. Chrysanthemum petals are scattered in the fountains.

My personal attendant will be
with me for the duration, offering towels, slippers, guidance, holding my robe.
Waiflike, she glides along the hall hardly touching the cool white floor. Her doshas
must be exquisitely balanced.

After a steam and sauna, each
in my personal steam and sauna room - the wood in the sauna is moulded to make
a pillow - I'm taken to the massage room. Part of my treatment includes laying
me out on a hard surface over a towel. The massage will be medium-strength over
my body laid out on a back-friendly wooden plank. I try to suppress the mental vision of a
manual-crank lasagna-making machine.

I follow instructions. The
robe is removed and I lie face down. I've been given a disposable bikini bottom,
but that's all.

Then the twins enter.

This Ayurvedic massage
involves two people administering coordinated long strokes over a generous
basting of herbed oil. First the legs, then the back, then the legs and back,
the arms, the arms and the legs and back, then the neck, back and legs. I know
this technique. Back at home, I make pies. Rolling out the dough is second
nature.

The two masseuses are young
women with faces I keenly remember before going under. They have porcelain skin
and rounded features of an ancient time. They move lightly, like twin apsara,
winged angels of the kind you see sculpted into the soft sandstone of a Hindu
temple. But whimsy aside, these ladies understand NHL Zambonis. My body melts
into the towel, but in a pleasant way.

Then I'm asked to flip over.

Now being raised Catholic (however
compromised over time), the idea of being long-stroked toe to windpipe full
frontal by the twins is disturbing. An eye mask of silk and cucumbers is
applied. Either they have divined my discomfort, or maybe it's standard
practice. What you can't see you'll forget about. So in time I relax. Besides,
in this out-of-body experience, floating as music on scented air, it's really
someone else's body laid out on a plank. Father forgive me. It's not me!

At the end of the hour which
has included my head being similarly oiled and stroked, my personal attendant
returns. I feel like a kite on a string as she draws me over to the steam room
and then to the shower.

I dress and move on to the
salon for face and foot work delivered by the chief wedding beautician. She's a
busy lady during the wedding season, which doesn't quit here until mid
December. I submit to the upper lip threading without screaming and am rewarded
by a pedicure enriched with softening oils and some reflexology.

Dan awaits in the reception
area and happily receives me, doshas corrected.

Now we're on our way to the
Taj Mahal. Those in the know say to go there in the morning before the crowds come but
we didn't have a choice. This morning it was shrouded in fog so we had to wait
until after my spa treatment. So we're arriving at 5:00 pm, an hour before closing.

There are thousands of people
cueing and elbowing at the entrance. Guards in army uniform blow whistles and
chase people who are breaking the rules (like trying to climb the marble
lattice work circling the tomb inside). Organized chaos is not the appropriate
ambiance for the Taj Mahal, a monument to peace in death.

I know in my soul that I
experienced the best of the Taj Mahal feeling at the Kaya Kalp spa. The Taj
Mahal is a sad song for a dead princess. It's about a prince's love and his
continued worship of the beloved after her death. But at 5:00 pm it's sadly also
about rushing the gates.

After touring the building
like a rat prodded through a maze, there's only one thing I must do here...alone,
at least as much alone as one can amongst a thousand other tourists. Dan's off
taking pictures and I find my way to the marble bench on which Princess Diana
sat on a dark day preceding her divorce. I tried to imagine the place empty and
exuding the richness of feeling it was designed for.

A young Indian woman sits
next to me.

"Are you enjoying? Is
this not the most beautiful place?"

"Yes, it's lovely."

"You know that white is
the colour of love." She gestures towards the scene before us, the most
famous white marble tomb of all time."

"But white is also the colour of
death in those times" I respond. I couldn't help myself. Let's be clear.

Dan overhears this exchange,
watching the young woman as she sinks away quietly, sadly.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Instead of flying home
directly from Amsterdam, we broke up our
crossing by stopping over in Iceland
for five days. Ever since I saw my first Fridrik Fridriksson flick at the Toronto International Film Festival (Reykjavik101), I've
wanted to take in a Saturday night in downtown Reykjavik. Unfortunately, Dan and I slept
through our 11 pm wake-up, dead exhausted from a trip to the interior, so
Saturday night Reykjavik
mayhem remains at large.

********

We took advantage of a special offered by Iceland Air to
break up our trip home to Canada
from Amsterdam with a five-night stopover in Reykjavik. So in mid
April, we left the bursting colour of a Dutch spring for Iceland's
playful gloominess.

You need to be a bit strange to live in Iceland, situated barely a frozen finger south
of the Arctic Circle. With an average summer
temperature of 14 degrees, the island has been likened to a fridge that's left
open for six weeks a year. At least that what author Hallgrimur Helgason says
in his quirky novel (and therefore classically Icelandic), A Hitman's Guide to House Cleaning.

One day, we're on our way to the Laundromat Cafe, a popular
eatery that merges three happy pastimes: chowing down on puffin steak, reading
paperback novels, and doing one's laundry.

But first, a blond teenager stops us on the street demanding that we
listen to her sing while her giggling friends take her picture. She has a sweet
voice and gives us her take on an Icelandic song about running away. Growing up
in the company of 33 Holocene volcanoes (young and active) and 2 Pleistocene
volcanoes (older and active) probably explains the theme.

Reaching the cafe, Dan is delighted to see thousands of
paperback books lining shelves under the bar. He's been carrying around a kilo
of pulp fiction throughout Europe not finding
any used book exchange.

"Yes, we trade books," responds the blond
waitress.

"My books are nearly new so I want to exchange them for
good ones. Which ones work for an exchange?"

"It depends on the colour." she explains.

We bend our heads to examine the collection looking for some
kind of colour-coding.

"I don't understand."

"If you bring us a book that's mostly blue, you can
take any other blue book from the shelf. If you want that title, referring to
the one in Dan's hand, you need to give me a white book in exchange."

I stand back and look again at the library. Indeed, all
books with predominately white spines are grouped together, then blue ones,
then red. There's no topical or alphabetical organization to the books; it's
only by spine colour. Until now, I've never noticed that The da Vinci Code has a red spine, as does The Accidental Tourist. These are side by side with Face Down in the Marrow Bone Pie,
another fine piece of literature with a red spine.

After lunch, Dan and I return to our walking tour. It's so
damp-cold, Dan broke down and bought a sheep wool headband. I'm dressing in
layers. It won't creep past 6 degrees today.

I was expecting the old town to look like St.
John'sNewfoundland with clapboard
houses and colourful paint, but Reykjavik's
wooden or stucco-clad structures are mostly white. Perhaps a white house is
easier to see when you stumble home in the dark six months of the year.

There's an eccentricity to the architecture and an
artsy quality to many products displayed in shop windows. I admire the expensive
salmon skin purses for their design and suppleness. And unusual combinations keep
surprising me, like freshly squeezed orange juice accompanied by cod liver oil on
our breakfast buffet.

One building in particular is eye-catching. It's the
grey-white, unpronounceable HallgrimskirkjaChurch
dominating the horizon. Its cement buttresses, inspired by natural basalt rock
formations on the coast, remind me of gigantic organ pipes up close. But from
far away, the buttresses make the church tower look like an upright rocket
ready for launch. Gothic-meets-Viking in the twenty-first century. In my mind's
eye, I can see the entire population of 300,000 blonds filing through its
enormous doors when this geothermal time-bomb blows. Then it would take off to
a new home in the sun.

Dan says I'm sounding like an Icelander. "Stop it."

Speaking of unpronounceable words, Icelandic is a language
that baffles me. But we're not alone in being unable to remember or repeat
place names. A few years ago, when six days of volcanic eruptions shut down air
travel throughout Europe, journalists gathering here just gave up trying to
pronounce the name of the belching volcano, Eyjafjallajökull. They settled for "that volcano over
there."

While speaking and spelling words are one thing, singing the
language is something else. You can only imagine how hard it is to sing any
language with more consonants than vowels. So when we took in Les Miserables a couple of nights ago at
the National Theatre, and it was performed entirely in Icelandic, we made sure
to get seats outside of spitting range.

It's time to go home.

For our last afternoon here, we visited the famous Blue
Lagoon, a large outdoor thermal bath. In this chilly weather, the steam billows
up and rolls over the hot water opaque with finely ground minerals. Dan and I
can barely see each other. It's all foggy white, bathers are shadows lightly sketched
on a blank canvas. It's when we leave the steamy pool that we become clear.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

There are so many places to eat well in Hong Kong that the choices confuse me. So I've carved out a tiny piece of the city to explore for luncheon options. SOHO is a good start for a newcomer.

Hong Kong island gets me turned around. Intuitively, I think that the water is "south" and yet it's really "north". The reason why I lose my bearings is because the billboard maps, conveniently posted about town, are always rendered with the water at the bottom, which is the place I would expect to find "south". Then again, maybe it's just me.

Perhaps a better way to hold onto your bearings is to think of Kowloon, the mainland, as being north of the island, which is how we'd be looking at Hong Kong on a world map or globe. In this way - keeping the big picture of Hong Kong front and centre - you'll probably keep your correct orientation on the island.

So here we are around one third of the way up the mountain (due south and up) from Central MTR station in an area called SOHO, an acronym for "South of Hollywood". There are a few streets here, parallel to each other running east-west where we take our lunch just about every day. These streets are: Hollywood, Staunton, Elgin and a few other small intersecting lanes. The SOHO area is really a subset of the larger area called Central.

This is an area where I go without a fixed restaurant in mind. We don't make reservations and we just walk around and look at the concentration of unique, hip, artsy, boutique-like small restaurants each with Set Lunch Menus. Invariably the selection is international. If we wanted Dim Sum, we'd head over to the mainland. Here on Hong Kong island, in SOHO it's all about western expats, international finance, select wines and pubs.

Lunch crowds begin around 1pm and the prolific eateries fill up and drown you out with chatter, clinking, rushing waiters and it keeps going up to about 3pm. In order to have our choice, we start the hunt after noon and take a seat before 1pm.

We've found that set lunch menus are posted everywhere and typically include an appetizer, a main, and tea or coffee. Some will be $88 HKD, many more $98 and a few pushing up to $128. Beyond that price point there are more exclusive, formal places, with set lunch as high as $198. But most of the options tend to hover around $98. In USD, this means between $11 and $17.

While this price range may be pricey to some and cheap to others, that's only part of the story. If you add a glass of house wine to your meal, you'll likely pay $70 HKD or more, almost the price of your set lunch! Wines might be easy to come by here compared to other countries in southeast Asia, but I find that kind of price, per glass, expensive (especially when you can buy a decent bottle merlot in the supermarket these days for $49 HKD in a two-for one offer). Thankfully, the house wine is usually a solid Australian entry and not something made locally.

But assuming you don't take wine with lunch, then you will finish off just 10% higher than the posted price since service is always added to the bill. There's no tax, at least no additional tax.

When you explore SOHO, also tune into the location of the Central-Mid Levels Escalator which bridges each of the parallel streets as you make your way up the mountain from Connaught. My husband and I only discovered this brilliant lung saver after a few days in town. While walking the streets in Hong Kong is easy enough provided they are east - west streets, once you head south you're mountain-climbing. Streets are steep and in the hot, humid weather, without the escalator, you'll work off your lunch in a mere block.

But maybe that's a good thing for the young. Me, I prefer the escalator. I'll work off lunch by shopping.